Dinner Is Served!

The cutlery baby quilt is finally finished. I really did drag the final border quilting on and on, but I'm happy with the final result:


I did an impromptu corner stone quilting after ripping out some very wonky free-hand flowers.

QUESTION FOR YOU:

Unfortunately, the ripped out stitches left little holes behind, so the flower-motif is still there - any tips on how to get those out????


I used this cute jungle/safari flanelette for the backing - I just love flanelette on baby quilt backs. I found this one in a fabric store in Montreal, Quebec.

Here are some of the animals close up, as well as the quilting look of the back:


And, I have one more question for you!

I spent seemingly forever knotting and sewing away the loose thread ends, sigh.


It was a flash back to the wedding bento box quilt - those threads almost made me late for the wedding! I actually started doing the back stitching at the start end end of each quilting line and just snipping the threads. Gasp! And that from me, the thread snob - I used to be so proud that you couldn't see where a seam started on my quilts. But I guess below it all, I'm plain lazy.

So, I'm wondering whether you are a snipper or a knotter/sewer - I guess this is a question for machine quilters only, as the patient hand-quilters among you don't have much of a choice, or do you?

Honoured

Crispy said such wonderful things about my quilting when she advertised my give-away (thanks for that!!!), I feel all gooey inside :) It really means so much to get such compliments from fellow quilters.

I love all the visitors coming to my blog and the comments that have been rolling in :) They all put a smile on my face!

In honour of Crispy, I don't want to disappoint any newcomers, so here's another quilting progress post:

I've been quilting away on the cutlery quilt, the center is done - hooray!


I thought long and hard about the type of quilting I wanted to do to flatten the strips in between the cutlery zigzag. In the end, the choice fell on the free-motion loopy-loops since I really like them. I want to try pebbles and grids soon, too.

In the end, I'm really happy with the popping zigzags, I hope it shows in the picture, because my view is biased of course since I see the quilt 3-D.


But hey, if you want to see it in 3-D, too, maybe a visit to PEI is in order. The island is supposed to be beautiful in the summer - so far, no one seems to have told Mr. or Mrs. Summer...

Thanks again for stopping by and I'm happy my give-away is working at least in some ways! (I tried to hide comments so the challenge would be a bit more of a challenge than reading the posted comments, but it didn't work... oops, didn't think that one through *grins*)

On A Roll!

Holy moley! I basted and quilted the basic outlines on both baby quilts last night and sewed the top side of the binding on by this morning. I'm on a drive for these two quilts it seems!

I'll get them bound this weekend and decide on what kind of extra quilting - if any - I want for each quilt.

I've outlined the beige and starry blue border on the polar bear quilt and the panels really pop out since the batting on that quilt is fairly thick; on the cutlery quilt, I've outlined the red-brown cutlery zig-zag pattern going through the quilt and am considering an overall pattern to fill in the areas in between (pale green and blue) to make the zig-zag lines pop out. Maybe waves or loops... or maybe something more complicated for practice! I've drawn great inspiration from Diane Gaudinsky's blog (see my blog bar) and her breath-taking machine free-motion quilting.

Sorry, no pics today, but probably finished quilts next week :)

Two Baby Quilt Tops Done

I worked late last night because I really wanted to get these two baby quilt tops together.

Finished the border on the cutlery quilt:

I added a bit of yellow through the borders as the pale green made it look a bit too blah before.

And I also cut the borders for the polar bear quilt top and put the blocks together - familiar layout now, isn't it?


Here are a couple of the blocks in more detail...


I have the backings for both of these quilts cut out - flanelette for both - and have enough batting in the house, so I might even get both of these basted tonight. Yay for progress!

Busy Girl!

So, as I said, inspiration struck, not just today but over the last week. I felt quilts just pouring out of me, so I got started.

First, I cut into the polar bear fabric I bought in BC. Time for framed theme quilts!
I've been planning these for a while and bought lots of fabric for them, just never got around to them...

I have a dark blue background planned for this quilt right now, I'll lay it out to see if I like it, choosing fabrics was difficult for this one - it never really popped until I added the beige borders.



Next, I decided to use the cool cutlery fabric I bought recently. I matched a blue fabric and at first a pale yellow, which also shows up in the cutlery print. However, that combination looked totally blah.


I wasn't entirely happy with the green either, but everything else made the quilt either too bright or too boring. This way at least I have a dark, a bright and a pale/mute print.

I decided on a very simple rail fence pattern in a zigzag layout.


This quilt top came together so quickly, I could barely blink, and I do like the strange colour combination in the end.

Let's see what I'll come up with for borders!


The next project really deserves its own post, so I'll put that up tomorrow! Stay tuned, but let's just say that with all the 9-patching going on in blogland, I couldn't resist any longer...